Thursday, January 29, 2009

Caroline Glick on Geert Wilders: Europe's last man standing?

"Fitna" ends with a call for Muslims to expunge Koranic verses commanding them to conduct jihad from their belief system, and with a call for Dutchmen to defend their country, their culture and their civilization from the rising current of Islam in Europe.

All the material presented in "Fitna" is accurate. And it is also explosive. But it is hard to see how it could be illegal. By presenting the material in the way that he does, Wilders is not demonizing Muslims, he is challenging - indeed he is practically begging - his countrymen to engage in a debate about whether or not his dim assessment of Islam is correct.

Wilders has been living under 24-hour police protection since a Dutch jihadist murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004. Van Gogh was murdered after he released his short film "Submission," which described the misogyny of the Islamic world and the systematic terrorization of women in Islamic societies. Since then numerous Muslim clerics have issued religious judgments, or fatwas, calling for Wilders to be murdered.

Last month Wilders visited Israel and was the keynote speaker at a counter-jihad conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem sponsored by MK Dr. Aryeh Eldad. Speaking to a standing-room only crowd, and under heavy guard, Wilders argued that Israel is a frontline state in the global jihad. The war against Israel, he claimed has nothing to do with territory, and everything to do with ideology. Israel, as the forward outpost of Western civilization in the Islamic world, stands in the way of Islamic expansion. Consequently, he claimed, when Israel defends itself by fighting its enemies, it is also protecting Europe and the rest of the free world.

As he put it, "Thanks to Israeli parents who see their children go off to join the army and lie awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and have pleasant dreams, unaware of the dangers looming."

Unfortunately, the Dutch court's decision to prosecute Wilders for calling attention to the threat of jihad in Europe demonstrates that the Europeans aren't particularly grateful to their defenders. Indeed, they despise them. Films like "Fitna," and Israel's use of its military to defend its citizens from Islamic supremacists, serve to remind them of the growing threat they desperately seek to ignore. Consequently, Europeans embrace every opportunity to blame any messenger.

THE RIPPLE effects of Wilders' indictment were immediately evident. In England, the British Muslim community mobilized to prevent his film from being screened in public. "Fitna" was scheduled to be shown at the House of Lords on January 29. But last Friday, with the threat of mass Muslim riots hanging thickly in the air, the House of Lords announced that it was cancelling the event.

British Lord Nazir Ahmed called the decision to prevent the thought-provoking, factually accurate film from being shown, "a victory for the Muslim community."

WILDERS' INDICTMENT is a textbook example of blaming the victim. Wilders has been forced to live a miserable life for the past four years. He has no home. Security forces move him from place to place every single day. Since Van Gogh's murder, Wilders' entire life has become one long attempt to dodge the bullet permanently pointed at his head by radicalized Muslims in Holland and throughout the world. These would-be killers wish to see him dead not to avenge any violence Wilders committed, but rather, they believe he must die for doing nothing more than talking about Islam and how he interprets its message and meaning.

Needless to say, the Dutch Muslims Wilders caught on tape in Fitna calling for an overthrow of the Dutch constitutional order and threatening homosexuals have not been arrested for inciting hatred.

AND THAT'S the thing of it. Increasingly, throughout Europe, those who point out the dangers of radical Islam are hounded - first by Muslims - and then by legal authorities. In contrast, those who seek to intimidate and physically silence them are embraced by the states of Europe as legitimate leaders of their Muslim communities.

This dismal state of affairs, where jihadists are supported and their victims are oppressed, is true not only of people like Wilders who actively fight radical Islam's encroachment on European freedom. It is also the case for people who are victimized solely on the basis of their ethnic identity.

At the same time Wilders and people like him are forced into hiding, Jews throughout Europe find themselves assaulted and under siege not because of anything they have done, but because they are Jews.

Incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Europe reached post-Holocaust record highs over the past month. Jewish children have been violently attacked in France, barred from schools in Denmark, and harassed in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Germany just for being Jews.

In Britain, Muslims have now taken to entering into Jewish-owned businesses and kosher restaurants to threaten the owners and patrons - just because they are Jewish. Synagogues have been firebombed and defaced. Calls have been issued in the US Muslim community on the Internet for Muslims in America to similarly intimidate Jews by entering into synagogues during prayer services and condemn worshippers for supporting Israel.

Jewish men have been brutalized by Muslim gangs in Britain and viciously stabbed in France, just because they are Jewish. In Sweden, pro-Israel demonstrators were attacked with stones by Muslims this week. Even in the US, anti-Semitic violence and intimidation has reached levels never seen before. And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence throughout what is commonly referred to as the free world, the perpetrators of the violence and intimidation are Muslims. They attack with the full backing of non-Muslim multiculturalists as well as neo-Nazis. The two groups, which are usually assumed to be at loggerheads, apparently have no problem converging on the issue of hating Jews.

And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence, the Islamic identity of the attackers has been de-emphasized or obscured by the media and by politicians, or used as justification for their crimes. In France, for instance, from the way government officials talk it, would be reasonable to assume that a dozen Muslim teenagers were provoked to viciously beat a ten-year-old Jewish girl by the IDF's operation against Hamas in Gaza.

HERE THEN, we arrive at the point that the cabinet missed on Sunday when it passed its decision to commit the government to providing legal assistance to any IDF veteran who runs afoul of European legal authorities during vacations in London and Brussels and Oslo and Stockholm. The point that was missed is that in the event that IDF veterans are charged with war crimes, even the best attorneys will be of little use. These veterans will not be defendants at legitimate trials. They will be the victims of politically motivated show-trials.

We know Britain is dying when a member of the House of Lords threatens to bring a mob into the streets if his fellow Lords listen to a speaker he doesn't like. And, when this happens, the thug Lord, a so-called "moderate Muslim" is not immediately put to a vote of expulsion from the House (and/or the nation). How unspeakably sad. But hope in the possibility of ordinary Europeans taking back their nations will only renew from such revelations of the utter failure of the present ruling class. I am confident it will happen. Here is one group trying to guilt what may remain of any conscience in the ruling classes of the once-liberal, now fascist, Netherlands. Consider joining their letter-writing campaign. I think we can assume that the Amnesty International letter-writing clubs around the world have yet to take up the Geert Wilders challenge.

6 comments:

.Defending your life and culture is not racist or xenophobic.FREE Partij voor de Vrijheid! The Koran shouldn't be banned. Mein Kampf isn't a 'Holy Book', but it shouldn't be banned either, but you should be able to criticize it and the idiots who agree with it.

As many sane people know, Geert Wilders is NO racist. He is simply against out-of-control immigration; and against immigrants who won't assimilate; and the ones who beat Gays and rape non-Muslim women for not being covered up. He is also very much against the ones who kill their own daughters and sisters for their 'family honor'..absurd thought - God of the Universe saysdon't criticize religions

just use Christian wordssubstitute for Islam's words

.here's an absurd thought -your Supreme God knewJesus as a pedophile

and a raping terroristconverting slaves by the sword.Muslims are not a 'race' anyway, they are followers of a religion/ideology and its Sharia Law. Most Muslims aren't even Arabs, which by the way, is also not a 'Race'.

But their duty is, according to their Koran, to spread Sharia law over the whole Earth. It might take 100-200 years, if they succeed.

Is that the kind of world we want for our great-grand childrens' great-grand children? A Taliban Planet? I bet not. Muslims are the biggest victims of Islam. Wilders is NOT against Muslims, he is against Islamic Fundamentalism.

We all should read the Koran, but be careful, for some strict Islamists prohibit non-Muslims from having or holding one. Also, it is only 'official' in Arabic, and some Muslims say Non-Muslims can't understand it. I wonder why.

This is BIG, this is REAL BIG! SPREAD THE WORD to the world everyone! The EU Mandarins have crossed the line! If this goes to court, how much more of the public will become aware of this tyranny?All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. If there is no freedom of speech, then there can be no real freedom.

The Christians and Jews don’t riot when somebody makes fun of Christ or Jews. People must learn to be civilized, and held to account when they are not. Muslims included.

Geert Wilders is a hero spreading the painful truth. He MUST be protected!.here's an absurd thought -your Supreme God saysChristians are a race

If Geert Wilders falls, then Freedom of speech is dead in Europe. We are launching an extensive International Action SITA including two possible texts ; one comparing Wilders and Winston Churchill and another Wilders and Charlie Chaplin:

anon goes around calling people "diseased", "bigot", "racist" with apparently no need to offer a reasoned explanation for why. Maybe that's the kind of scapegoating behaviour that needs to be put on trial. But obviously this person does not have the capacity to understand why Wilders sees the world the way he does.